Principal Manuscript Evidence for the Greek New Testament

No ancient literature has survived in its original form; everything we have is derived from copies of the originals. The NT is no exception. However, in comparison with any other ancient literature, the NT is without a peer-both in terms of the chronological proximity and the surviving number. Several ancient authorities are preserved in only a handful of manuscripts. Not so with the NT. There are approximately 5,500 Greek witnesses, ranging in date from the second century AD into the middle ages. Besides the Greek evidence, there are nearly 30,000 versional copies (e.g., Latin, Coptic, and Syriac), and over 1,000,000 quotations from the NT in the church Fathers. NT textual criticism has always had an embarrassment of riches unparalleled in any other field.

The Greek Witnesses

The Greek witnesses are by far the most important, since in large measure they represent some of our earliest witnesses and since they involve direct reproduction from Greek to Greek. There are four kinds of Greek witnesses: papyri, uncials (or majuscules), minuscules (or cursives), and lectionaries. The first three are important enough to warrant some discussion here.

Papyri

These documents are written on the cheap writing materials of the ancient world that were roughly equivalent to modern paper. Literally thousands of papyrus fragments have been found of which approximately 100 contain portions of the New Testament. Actually, taken together, these 100 fragments constitute over half of the New Testament and all but four are in the form of codices (i.e., four are scrolls rather than the book-form [codex]). All NT papyri were written with uncial or capital letters. They range in date from the early second century through the eighth century. About 50 of them are to be dated before the fourth century. Though many of them are somewhat fragmentary, and at times the copying was looser than one would like (i.e., they were done before the canon was officially recognized), they are nevertheless extremely important for establishing the text of the New Testament-if for no other reason than the fact that they represent some of the most ancient witnesses we possess. Five important papyri are illustrated in the chart below. The symbol for each papyrus is Ì followed by a number (e.g., Ì⁴⁵). The most important papyri cited in the NET NT footnotes are as follows:

Uncials

There are approximately 300 uncials known to exist today that contain portions of the New Testament and one uncial that contains the entire NT. Like the papyri, these manuscripts were written with uncial or capital letters, but unlike the papyri they were written on animal skins or vellum. For the most part they are beautiful manuscripts, elegantly written and routinely done in scriptoria and often for special purposes. Generally speaking, they range in date from the fourth through the ninth centuries. Our oldest complete copy of the NT is an uncial manuscript, Í (see chart below). The symbol for each uncial is either a capital letter (in Latin or Greek letters [though one ms has a Hebrew letter, Í]) or a number beginning with 0 (e.g., 01, 0220, etc.). The most important uncials cited in the NET NT footnotes are as follows:

Minuscules

There are approximately 2,813 NT Greek minuscule manuscripts known to us today. These copies range in date from the ninth to sixteenth centuries, were produced on vellum or paper, and were written in cursive or a lower-case, flowing hand. They are the best representatives of the medieval ecclesiastical text, that is, the Byzantine text. There are approximately 150-200 that deviate from the Byzantine standard, almost always representing an earlier transmissional stream and hence quite important for NT textual criticism. The symbols for the minuscules are of three kinds: (a) Arabic numbers (e.g., 1, 565, 1739), each of which represents one manuscript; (b) "family 1," [˹] "family 13" [˹³] (involving a group of closely associated manuscripts); (c) Byz (involving the majority of Byzantine minuscules). The following are among the more important witnesses cited in the NET NT notes:

Versional Evidence

Versions were initially prepared for missionary purposes. The history and transmission of versions are often quite complex, and scholars often do not agree on or do not know the particular dates or characteristics of the versions. The chart below contains the major versions cited in the notes; the most important abbreviations are listed, but not all abbreviations are indicated. For more information on the versional evidence for the NT, consult B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (3d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 67-86; B. M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977); and B. D. Ehrman and M. W. Holmes, eds., The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (Studies and Documents 46; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 75-187.

Patristic Evidence

A tremendous source for evidence of the Greek NT are citations found in early Church Fathers. They help to locate and date various readings and texttypes found in the manuscripts and versions. This field is quite complex for two broad reasons: (1) It is often difficult to determine if what the Father actually wrote has been preserved in the extant manuscripts or if corruption has occurred. (2) It is often difficult to determine if a Father is citing a text verbatim, paraphrasing it, or alluding to it. All of the Fathers cited in the notes are listed below. For more information on the patristic evidence for the NT, consult B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (3d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 86-92; and B. D. Ehrman and M. W. Holmes, eds., The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (Studies and Documents 46; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 189-236.

Ambrose of Milan, d. 397

Ambrosiaster of Rome, active 366-384

Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, d. 373

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, d. 430

Chromatius, d. 407

Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, d. 407

Clement of Alexandria, d. before 215

Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, d. 258

Cyril of Alexandria, d. 444

Cyril-Jerusalem, d. 386

Didymus of Alexandria, d. 398

Ephraem the Syrian, d. 373

Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, d. 403

Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, d. 339 or 340

Hesychius of Jerusalem, d. after 451

Hilary of Poitiers, d. 367

Hippolytus of Rome, d. 235

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, d. ca. 202

Jerome, d. 420

Justin Martyr, d. ca. 165

Marcion of Rome, 2^nd century

Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, d. 254

Pseudo-Athanasius, dates unknown

Serapion, d. after 362

Severian, d. after 408

Tertullian of Carthage, d. after 220

Theodore of Mopsuestia in Cilicia, d. 428

Victorinus-Pettau, d. 304

Hebrew and Greek Transliteration

Throughout the notes most Hebrew and Greek words or phrases will be transliterated into English. General guidelines for transliteration are as follows: Hebrew and Greek words or phrases in study notes will always be transliterated. Hebrew and Greek in translator's notes and text-critical notes will usually be transliterated, but there are some exceptions. Only the first occurrence of a word in any note will be transliterated. Hebrew and Greek words contained in citations of lexical tools (e.g., BDAG 2 s.v. ἄβυσσος) will not be transliterated, nor will Hebrew or Greek words and phrases contained in direct quotations. When appropriate (based on the context within the note) the translation of the word or phrase will follow the transliteration. If a Hebrew or Greek phrase in the notes is extensive, in many cases it will not be transliterated for stylistic reasons to avoid unnecessary length and awkwardness. Occasionally a Hebrew word will be written with radicals only and no vowel pointing; in this case there will be no transliteration. As per the Unicode® specification for the Hebrew language, furtive patakh has the same placement as the patakh.

Hebrew/English Transliteration⁵

Greek/English Transliteration

¹  With formal equivalence each word of the original language is represented by a word in the receptor (target) language, and the word and clause order is kept as nearly identical to that of the original language as possible. Thus this approach translates word for word.

²  With dynamic equivalence (sometimes called functional equivalence) the goal is to render the original language text in the closest natural equivalent in the receptor language, both in meaning and style. This approach translates phrase for phrase or thought for thought.

³  Dates given in this abbreviations list generally represent the date on which the version is considered to have been published. In a number of cases where the NT was released before the completion of the OT (e.g., the RV: NT 1881; OT 1885) it should be assumed that the NT underwent some degree of revision when it was (re)published along with the OT. Also, the publication date for the Apocrypha (if translated at all) is not indicated above; in many cases it was considerably later (e.g., the RV Apocrypha appeared in 1895). Finally, many of the modern versions have undergone repeated updates and revisions; these cannot all be indicated in an abbreviations list like this one, which is not intended to be a comprehensive chart of all Bible translations since the 1611 KJV.

⁴  Scripture references and certain definitions in BDAG are printed in bold type. This convention has not been retained in the NET Bible notes. Otherwise citations from BDAG are exact.

⁵ This transliteration scheme is based on the general-purpose style listed in Patrick H. Alexander et al., eds., The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999), section 5.1.2, with a few modifications.